Out of Mind
by Fury me
Summary: When the wear and tear takes over, there isn't much left you can hold on to. Hermione struggles to keep onto herself, because it's not a hero she needs when her captor is nothing more than subconscious. AU after HBP. Language, gore, psychological trauma.
1. Part 1

**AN: **Well. Hi! This is my gift for Lia, as part of the last dmhgficexchange on livejournal. The posting of it has been overdue for a while now, as I've wanted to go through it once more before I posted it here. Just to repeat: this story _is_ complete, I just need to go over it a bit more because it became a little confused towards the end. Of course, I decide that the time to post it is about three days before I get to watch the last film. Guhh.

My prompt:

Would you prefer an art or fic gift? Fic.  
>Preferred rating: T-MA<br>Describe what you'd like in as few words/keywords as possible: Something dark, set immediately after the war.  
>Optional: Song, Poem, or Quote (titleoriginal creator): Quote - It is not only the living who are killed in war. (Isaac Asimov)  
>Dealbreakers (absolute no-no's): No extreme kinks, PWP or fluff.<p>

**Disclaimer:** This is a purely fictional work based off of the equally fictional characters by JK Rowling.  
>I must give thanks to my lovely beta, toxicjericho, who whizzed through the story for me at an amazing speed because my entry was overdue *-*<p>

* * *

><p><em><strong>Part 1.<strong>_

It seems timed. Planned. She isn't there to see it, but she hears afterwards that it is spectacular.

The Dark Lord is taken down in a flood of brightest light.

All Hermione does know is that when she next turns around, Harry is standing alone. A line of blood trickles from the corner of his mouth. She slashes her wand, sword-like, and the spell hits the Death Eater she is duelling hard enough to slam him off of his feet. She runs toward Harry so fast she stumbles; for a moment she is scrambling to him on all fours before she is close enough so that she can fling her arms around him.

"_Harry_," is all she can say.

His arms are limp, his mouth slack. There is shock written on his face, but as she stares into his eyes, she sees the beginning of a smile as well. Then Ron is there, a grin splitting through the exhaustion on _his_ face, and he crushes them both to him. For a moment, it is just the three of them again, and Hermione can almost imagine that she is back at school. _There is sun, and laughter, and the cotton of school uniform scratches at her neck and none of the past __six__ years -_

Then the rest of the world catches up to them, and it breaks. Sound roars to her ears. Frantic shouts die down as realization spreads like a plague. Heads rise, towards them, like plants towards the sun. It begins as a small rumble, becomes a deep hum, then it erupts into an earthquake of voices and feet and in seconds they are engulfed. When they are forced apart, when she is forced to let go of Harry and Ron because the crowd pushes too hard, the reality of what has just happened hits her. However, in Hermione's mind, it comes out not as a victorious cry, but a disbelieving question.

_It__'__s finished?_

.

They regroup soon after. The remaining Death Eaters scattered after it was evident that Voldemort's downfall had not been a trick of the light. It takes only a few hours more to salvage what they can from the site, repair major damage and heal those who had already been injured before port-keying back.

The safehouse is small, crowded. Everyone seems slightly breathless, slightly beyond words. There is the occasional sound of pain. A voice finally breaks through the cloying silence, a strangled cry, and they turn to see Arthur Weasley striding towards them. Something about his face makes the crowd part, and when he is close enough he crushes Ron to him. Hermione watches, her smile fierce and her tears true. Almost six years of warfare has seen the Weasley clan cut down to half their whole. With the news of the Darkness coming to an end, there had clearly been no one Arthur could rely on to report the wellbeing of a single soldier.

Drinks are brought, and food. Hermione pushes Harry towards them while taking only a sandwich for herself. Harry seems to relax a little, but he is one of the first to stop eating. His expression tells Hermione exactly what he is tending to do. Gentle murmurs caress him as he makes his way to the centre of the room. Others quickly turn their attention away from the food as well. Hermione's eyes are half-lidded, and there is a faint smile on her face. Harry hates big speeches, but he is getting a little better at delivering them. Still, the majority of them fell well within the five minute mark.

"Friends," he says simply. "Our time and our blood, our sweat and our tears, our courage and our loved ones… All were spent for this day." He pauses, and expels a large breath. "This day_, we won._"

There is a ripple, a rumble through the small gathering. Hermione's small smile grows, and she raises her glass. Others catch on to her movement, and the gesture repeats around the room. Some glasses chink. Harry raises his glass in return, before stepping back towards Hermione. Ron does too, his father still following closely. There is a moment of content between them, before Arthur speaks up.

"Kids," he says, more out of habit than anything, "I've been talking with a few of the others, and we think it may be a good idea that for the next few days, you three should take a break. Just a day or two of quiet. Harry looks dead on his feet, and Ron is slurring his words." A hand touches her chin, makes Hermione look up. Arthur smiles kindly at her. "And Hermione looks as though she is asleep all the time, so she can focus all her energy on thinking."

Hermione had thought that in an established world that had thousands of years of history and culture, when it came down to a war there would be an equally established process, and hierarchy. The first few months of warfare had wiped that impression clean from her mind. Trying to create a functional army had been a challenge she did not see being surpassed by anything in her future. The Auror Office had been the only Ministry department that had been remotely helpful, and from then on she had been lucky to stumble across individuals who had a proper combination of good sense and intellect to be of much use. All in all, it is exhausting work.

Harry still tries to complain. "I appreciate your concern, Mr. Weasley, but we don't have time. Tomorrow – tomorrow we need to go after Yaxley, and recheck the wards on the Withero house. Then there's the damage the giants have done to Burnside, and the nest of Dementors that are getting close to Hogsmeade -"

"I'm planning the raid on the last Carrow house," Hermione argues as well, "Logistics won't let me just up and leave them now." (_Don__'__t leave_)

They turn to Ron, expecting his piece. To their surprise, the redhead's smile is placating. "I agree with dad."

Harry stills; Hermione raises her eyebrows. "What?"

Ron takes a deep breath and turns to Harry. "You want to stay, you want to see it all end, help make it end. You're right too; we still have our work cut out for us. But you're setting yourself up to take a worthless fall. Right now, while the Death Eaters regroup, _so can you_. Without a leader, without an organized hierarchy, they're most likely in chaos. Harry, please take this time to rest, even just for a little while. We _will_ strike, but you don't have to lead every charge."

He takes Harry's lack of response as a positive one, and so turns to face Hermione. Ron had learnt over the years to only fight her with good sense, and she knew that there was a fairly good chance that a lot of what would be coming would _make_ sense. She feels herself recoiling, while her mind bubbles hurriedly with excuses. However, Ron's actual argument is a little different from what she expects.

"Hermione, you haven't been sleeping well. We haven't been asking, but it's becoming very noticeably serious. I know that you sometimes don't sleep at all. _Please_ take this chance to rest."

His sincerity startles her into silence, while Harry looks both alarmed and horribly guilty for not noticing. No one else protests to the idea of locking the three of them in a small, confined space. A few were surprised that they would be leaving so soon, but most nod and agree that they need the rest. Even Harry eventually relents, and despite disliking being cooped up with little contact with the outside, Hermione soon stops protesting as well.

They follow Arthur to the safehouse. It's a space that does not seem to have any doors, and when she brushes her hand against the window pane, the tingle against her palm tells Hermione that the room does not have any real windows either.

"We thought that if you had a few uninterrupted days of rest, it would help," Arthur mutters. "Merlin knows what you three have been through, this is the least we could do…"

"Thanks Dad, I think this is just what we need." Ron seems cheerful, but his voice is hoarse. Harry nods absently.

The other three Aurors in the room Hermione recognizes by face but not by name. When she notices that Arthur looks inches away from hugging and crying and kissing them all, Hermione feels herself backing away, murmuring her thanks before allowing Ron to comfort his father and leaving Harry to stand by and look sympathetic. The obvious tiredness around the boys' eyes, their figures, their _magic_, whispers to the weathered part of her that is so used to looking after them. It urges her to take both their hands and tell them to sleep, sleep deep, perhaps after taking a Dreamless. After all, they do not need their reality chasing them into their subconscious, a place where the mind should be able to rightfully heal in peace.

_That is what this room symbolizes_, Hermione thinks to herself. _They want our fragile, fragile bodies to heal in peace. A sleep chamber. Well, I could think of another name for tha -_

A flash of nothing appears behind her eyes, and she clutches her hand to her chest.

Ron is suddenly behind her. "Hermione?"

She turns her face towards him. "Hey Ron. Is your dad okay?"

He places a hand on her shoulder. It is big and warm. Familiar. "Yeah, he'll be fine." He fidgets. "Are _you_ okay?"

Hermione turns and sees Harry talking to Mr. Weasley, but when she catches Harry casting them a fleeting look she knows that he is just playing the distraction. "What do you mean? I feel fine Ron."

"Well, it's just…" He shrugs uncomfortably, and his eyes are not quite able to keep her gaze. "I've been watching you, Hermione, I don't understand what I'm seeing. But we haven't had time to do anything about anything, take time out. Now we… are you sure you're okay? I was thinking maybe we should get a Healer to take a look at all of us."

"There's nothing wrong with us," she insists angrily. _There__'__s nothing wrong with _me.

_(It__'__s finished?)_

He does not believe her, but he also does not insist. Hermione walks away. She suspects that in the last few weeks, Ron has been feeling something inside and he has recognized it in her as well, but he is just like her and does not know what it is. _Prob__ab__ly just nothing, pro__b__ly just post stress. Prolly just -_

She walks close to the wall, lets her fingers trail against the plaster as she etches the room to memory. There are two distinct spaces. Both are low ceilinged and have cream walls, furniture placed close enough to give the beginning impressions of clutter. The first space, the one they all stand in, represents a living room, with a corner set aside as a small kitchen. The rest of the space is all plush couches and armchairs as well as an oak table too big for the three solitary chairs placed around it. A bookshelf stands against a wall. The decor is all earthy reds and browns and oranges, with undertones of forest and sunny highlights. The rug is thick enough that she imagines that she can push her toes in deep but she is not barefoot and cannot try. _(It__'__s finished?)_

The next room is only just big enough for the three beds placed along three sides of the wall, with decorative pot plants in two corners as well as a coffee table in the middle. There are no fake windows in this room; the walls are threaded instead with tapestries depicting historical tales that she does not recall. Hermione briefly wonders why they are given separate beds but not separate rooms.

There is one more door that she does not explore, as she expects to find only a bathroom behind it. Instead she slides out of her robe and slips off her shoes and climbs into the bed in the left corner. Voices still issue from the living room, but the weariness she began feeling hours ago has grown into an abyss. Sinking into the darkness, she reaches for her covers and her sleep, and calls impatiently for oblivion to take her. By the time Harry and Ron come searching for her, she is gone.

.

The first year had seen a massive amount of time being spent on cobbling teams together: scouts, medics, Auror teams and so on. The weeks they had wasted before they had begun to start working smoothly had cost them not only the time, but lives and allies as well. Jobs that had been haphazardly assigned were later taken over by those who proved to be more suitable, but the reassigning again took more time and effort. During the time that British wizards took to _arrang__e_ themselves for war, Voldemort's battle ready army gained ground fast.

Of course, Harry's 'job' never changed. He spearheaded the hunt for Voldemort, always insisted to always be there too. On good days he brought back invaluable information, sometimes even a Death Eater or two. His leadership skills were innate, his spirit infectious. On bad days, Harry was utterly reckless. He launched himself blindly into unfamiliar territory, barely escaping by the skin of his teeth, always returning with a major injury. His bad days gave her nightmares; Hermione could only wonder what Harry dreamed about.

Ron was no different. He went where Harry went, a personal protective shadow. His vigilance and aptitude surprised everyone, except for Hermione and Harry. Very rarely did Harry return from a mission more injured than Ron, and it made Hermione's heart simultaneously break and swell with pride. She and Ron had not decided whether they wanted their relationship to become serious. They had instead expressed, almost wordlessly, that at that moment neither had felt the need for their platonic relationship to develop into something else. It isn't a decision that she regrets, though Hermione finds that sometimes her hand lingers over him, especially when he returns to her bleeding. She herself has also had her share of mortal wounds, but it was Gryffindorian to disregard them. Compared to the boys, she had a stronger sense of self preservation, but she had ultimately been chosen for the red and gold for a reason too.

.

It is the sound of crying that rouses her, but when she opens her eyes, Hermione knows that she is not awake.

She opens her eyes to a wasteland. Thick clouds boil low in the sky. They blacken the landscape. The trees that dot her vision are dead, and a few of the bushes that clump by them are on fire, and from them spiral black smoke clouds that joins the frothing mass above her. There are branches that stick unnaturally up from the ground, some also on fire, and Hermione cannot make sense of what she is seeing until she realizes that they are not branches but the remnants of tents. Something tweaks by her leg, and she looks down.

There is a dog by her feet, slathered so completely in mud and filth that it is impossible to tell what colour its pelt had originally been; blood and meat well out of a gash in its side, presenting to the world, its body acting the foul platter. The dog stares up at her, the whites of its eyes showing. When she kneels down, it begins keening, breaking off too sharply because the creature can't get enough air. The horribly human sound stirs a sense of déjà vu inside her. Hermione looks up, and scans her surroundings again. Recognition curdles in her stomach. _She has been here before._ She stands, and leaves the dog behind.

She isn't out of earshot as she hears it die.

As she walks, Hermione tries to fight back the crippling memories so she isn't driven to her knees _(it__'__s finished?)_. She remembers why the dog was what stood out from this particular disaster. For a second it had been Crookshanks lying in the mud, broken and dying, her parents lost somewhere and in no condition to look after a housecat. She remembers standing by the creature's side, and not being able to do anything to help it. She remembers leaving the dog in a pool of its own blood and vomit and wondering what else she was leaving behind. When she next looks up, there is a figure standing in front of her. All she can see is his back.

She closes her eyes, but when she opens them again it is to earthen walls and warm beds. It takes Hermione a moment to realize that she is awake. She lies between the sheets for a moment, feeling raw. Her fingers creep under her pillow. Only when she finds the familiar wood does her heartbeat slow.

"Hey. How are you doing?"

Ron's voice doesn't sound much different than the day before. He walks closer to sit on the bed and takes her hand. When she turns to face him she finds that he doesn't look much different either.

"Hey," she replies, equally softly. "Bad dream. I'm alright. Did you get any sleep?"

He gives her a wry smile. "Last night? It's only been a bit over two hours since you two fell asleep." He gestures to the black mop of hair visible on the bed beside hers.

A habit they had developed over the years is to never _ask_ about nightmares. Throwing their subconscious nightmares into reality, they had decided, was too much; having to talk about real _and_ subconscious horrors was too much. Harry, of course, was the exception to the rule, his prophetic dreams frequently being subjected to the fiercest scrutiny.

Hermione rubs her eyes and sits up. The stiffness she feels tells her that it is impossible that only two hours have lapsed, that she has surely been asleep for at least half the day. Ron turns aside, and leans over Harry. Harry moves around as he sleeps, and makes strange noises. Ron whispers to him too.

Hermione gets out of the bed and pads quietly to the living room. She finds that aside from sleeping, and possibly reading, there isn't much to do. She tries to distract herself by making a drink, but she stops in front of the cabinets. She doesn't know which one to open for a mug, and which one to open for tea. When Ron steps in a few minutes later, she is still standing there.

He reaches out and shakes her gently. "Hermione?"

She jerks and turns around. "Do you know where the mugs are?"

He wordlessly opens a top cabinet that reveals more cups three people should be allowed to own, and fetches a teabag as well. She stands in the way, her wand held loosely in one hand as she watches him move around.

"Have you slept at all?" she asks again, realizing that he never answered her.

Ron shrugs without looking at her. "I tried."

Hermione spells water into her cup, and uses a heating charm to boil it. Ron drops in the teabag and takes a seat at the large table next to her. The silence penetrates slowly. It is a real silence, not one induced by a spell or a charm. Hovering with it is a crushing desire to be unconscious, but also a hint of needing to scream. In their roughly cobbled world of urgencies and painful mistakes, the silence is unnatural. Hermione doesn't remember the last time they could sit like this, with a silence that was not wasteful _(not natural)_.

Ron does not move, even when she begins sipping her drink. Her eyes flicker to him over the rim of her cup. His face is tense, and devoid of emotion. He hardly blinks, and his breath comes so quietly she feels like she needs to check it. It is a state that she recognizes, and it gives Hermione chills to see it here, where they should be safe, should be able to relax and sleep. That is the whole point, isn't it? She places a hand over his. His hands feel icy against hers.

"Ron, it's okay now." She tries to get him to meet her eyes. "It's over." _(It__'__s finished)_

There is a masked intensity in his eyes, a hidden watchfulness that worries her, almost scares her. She changes tactics. Hermione sets down her mug and kneels in front of him.

"Ron, I'm here now. Go to sleep, I'll take your shift." They could heal later. Now was time for rest.

She almost thinks that it won't work. She hopes it doesn't work, she hopes that he is just daydreaming. She knows that he has something else to say to her, but can't quite remember what. He looks so tired and his eyes are glazed over. However, after a few seconds Ron does stand and head toward the bedroom, his lips moving soundlessly to himself. She waits for him to pull himself into bed before walking over to sit by him. His body faces the wall but he turns his head towards her. Hermione opens her mouth, but cannot find words.

Ron waits for her to say something, and she waits for words to come to her.

She sits on his bed, and she waits.

.

They find that the rigidity of routine, just like everything else, has carved its way into their lives, and Ron is not the only one to show signs of it. Though they could be awake at the same time, they are never asleep at the same time. After the first day, it begins grating at her. Harry sleeps more than she or Ron can, but his sleep is always more fitful than theirs. Hermione sleeps the least, but the longest. When she asks, Ron and Harry tell her that she is quiet while she sleeps, and she wishes silently for the dreams she dreams to be quiet too.

The food is also interesting. The selection they find stashed is small, though most is instant, and some require only a heating charm. Hermione tries to get the others eating more than bits of fruit and tea, but she doesn't provide a very good argument when she finds herself not eating much else either. She feels an edge of exhaustion that seems to have only been sharpened ever since coming here.

Tonight, Ron and Harry are both asleep, and for once both quiet. She fully intends on breaking their _(silly) _habit of sentry tonight, but still there is a niggle in the back of her mind, the remaining thread of what Ron had felt more strongly than she. _Not safe stay gotta keep -_

Halfway between sheets, Hermione thinks about more clothes. It had indeed been a bathroom behind the door on the right, and they had shed their soaked, battle worn drabs as soon as they had found the change of clothes stashed under the sink, but she had no pyjamas. If closure is what her subconscious needed, she thought that regaining the simple luxury that allowed a distinction between night and day clothes would be a good place to start.

She opens her eyes to find herself standing in the centre of someone's kitchen. Because she is expecting it, Hermione sifts through her memory and locates what she is standing in. The dream (there is no other explanation for where she is) is so vivid it makes her freeze as she allows herself to process it, separate it from reality.

She steps past the broken glass, and ignores the crimson slathered across the white tiles and the stench of much worse. The living room is not much of an improvement. Hermione closes her eyes, opting to use the wall to guide her out of the house. She didn't want to see what – who – was lying on the floor. Not again. A special brand of terror grips her, lashes on tight as the fear of tripping over a dead body and into who knew what almost liquefies her legs. Hermione turns to press herself against the wall, and opens her eyes.

Right in front of her is a bloody handprint. It had been smudged as the hand's owner pushed off from the wall, but the imprint of the digits had been smashed into the wall with disturbing detail. Hermione knows that her breath is sobbing in and out of her, and she also knows that, dream or not, if she did not get out of here she would lose it. What _it_ was she was not exactly sure of, but it would probably be something important. _Especially if she didn__'__t get out of here out of here right -_

She wrestles with the knob on the front door and almost falls face first out onto the porch when it gives way unexpectedly under her fumbling hands. In the strange way dreams did, the well lit indoors led to a grey dusk outside, the last of the colour bleeding quickly from the sky. There was no hint of the sun, save for a glow along the edge of the horizon.

Only now does Hermione allow herself to turn back and look at the house. She would've said that it was her first murder scene, but she had no idea if it was true. There had been so many. The first time just did not stand out anymore, especially since it had not been the worst. Even from the outside it was clear what had happened within. Her teeth come down on her bottom lip so hard it draws blood, but it makes things even more surreal when she doesn't jerk awake from the pain. The white picket fence sags, as if a giant had come along and sat on it. Windows hang out of their frames, and there are even holes in the roof. The dim light paints everything over in blue steel and Hermione feels herself backing away.

Right into a solid someone solid standing behind her. _Breathing hands lash down trap __–_

"_Hermione!_"

Her screams lasts just long enough for her to realize that she is the one they are coming from before she quickly snaps her jaw shut. Her eyes are so wide they hurt, but Hermione doesn't know how to close them. Familiar green eyes float in front of her vision.

"Hermione," Harry calls again, gentler than before but just as urgent.

She closes her eyes and forces herself to breathe evenly. She can feel her magic plunging around her, and when she finally opens her eyes she sees that Harry can feel it too.

"Bad dream," she finds herself saying again. She finds that his gentle eyes are probing her for more answers, and sighs. "It was Hannah. Hannah Abott."

He doesn't let go of her shoulders, but she doesn't say anything else. She can almost hear what he is thinking. Everyone knew about the disaster the Abott rescue had been, but only a few people knew how personal it had been for Hermione. It is not the first time she had dreamed about it… but even as the details bled from her memory, Hermione knew something had been distinctly different.

The boys' sleep had been getting more and more peaceful, the calm and serenity of the safehouse finally beginning to work its magic (literal or not – she wasn't sure), but for some reason, she couldn't say the same for herself. Out loud, Hermione said very little, but her dreams were getting… not _worse_, but more frequent. It had not escalated to the point that the other two were openly scrutinizing her, but she could see they were beginning to worry. They had been through too much together for her to be able to hide much for long. _Is this something to hide they need to know or_

"What happens now?" Ron seems to be addressing the room in general. He sits at the dining table, and they can see him from the bed. Hermione looks up, and neither she nor Harry asks him to clarify. "I don't think we should stay in this place much longer," he continues, a little grimly.

"It feels like isolation," Hermione murmurs to herself.

"Limbo," Ron agrees.

"If we were constantly sleeping, like they probably assumed we would be, the days wouldn't be dragging out like this." Harry pointed out gently.

"Day," Hermione corrects quietly. "It's only been a day."

"That is exactly my point," Ron argues. "It feels like… it feels a lot longer."

Hermione sits back, sighing, and lets the silence hang for a while. In their world, they could literally _make_ time pass more slowly. They had not been told, but it was just the sort of ridiculously dangerous magic that George would insist that his father try for them.

She looks between Harry and Ron. There was something she wanted to try, something that may snap her out of her dream state… maybe. She knows that from the moment Ron had first hugged them that he had conquered this feeling, but Harry may still understand what she would say.

"Harry," she says tentatively, waiting for him to turn around so she could watch his reaction. She has to fight her inflection, eradicating the interrogative from her voice. "_It__'__s finished_."

She has been fighting herself to say it for a while. The two words feels infected inside of her, she needs them out. She waits for him to smile, to agree, relax, _anything_, but in the second when he doesn't, Hermione knows that this feeling hanging inches from her face is not one she is experiencing alone.

"You too, huh?" It comes out a little bitter.

"One more day, and we'll be out. Direct contact with the outside world will probably get rid of it," he mutters.

Ron rakes a hand, claw-like, through his hair. He had watched their exchange silently, not confusion on his face but a little… a little worry, possibly even pity. Then he shakes his head, and walks over, smiling at them. It is a clean smile, one that reminds Hermione of fresh things and new beginnings. "Harry. You did it mate. _You did it_."

Hermione watches Harry close his eyes, and fight the big monster they had within them; the one that whispers _look behind you _during the night, the one that jabs you in the throat as you sleep, the one that leers when Snatchers are close. The one that, at the end of a bone breaking day, cackles like a Death Eater, right into your ear.

Harry reaches out to grip both their hands. "No, Ron. _We_ did it. We all did."

When he opens his eyes and there's a smile there to match Ron's, Hermione knows that Harry has conquered his monster. They both have.

She turns her gaze inwards and flinches.

_Is it my turn now? _

_(__It__'__s __finished__)_


	2. Part 2

_**Part 2.**_

During the first few months of the war, Hermione felt much less stability than Harry or Ron in the war effort; as a result, she jumped roles frequently as she searched to make a place for herself. She trialled as a mediwitch, but she hadn't had the time for the training required of her to become a fully qualified Healer; she tried going on the missions with Harry and Ron, but people always used her as a correspondent to the other two, giving her orders when they wouldn't have dared approached the boys. She had found it disgustingly condescending and misogynistic, and had quickly slashed that option from the list as well. By then, she had begun feeling a little worthless, a little useless, and it had been almost pure chance that she found herself stumbling into the Logistics department.

She had been at one of the sites the Order (despite his death, many had decided to keep Dumbledore's original army alive as an honour to both the man and his beliefs) had set up as a safe point, and a blueprint had caught her eye. Hermione had pushed her way into the room, and the amount of paper that had been crammed into the tiny space amazed her. The piles were almost stacked up to the ceiling, each piece covered with either diagrams so detailed they made no sense to her, and writing miniscule enough that even squinting did not help her make much out of them.

It was here that Matthew Libon, head of Planning and Logistics, had found her digging through his notes. After the initial confrontation and hostility and he had been convinced that she wasn't a spy (he didn't get out much), his attitude became much warmer and quickly began explaining what he did. She had been ecstatic about stumbling upon them, and dumbfounded that it had not occurred to her earlier to seek it. Aside from being intellectually challenging, it was a job that had no stipulated working schedule, eating and sleeping hours were liberties, and all of the above had been exactly what Hermione was looking for. Even then her bad dreams had started accumulating to become a regular thing, and she had grasped the chance at avoiding sleep itself with both hands.

.

Tonight, a little girl lies at her feet. Hermione studies her, finding a morbid fascination she never knew she had rising within. After a while she remembers the girl. She remembers the auburn hair that glowed in the firelight, the tear tracks down her mask of soot. Most of all, Hermione remembers the clawing feeling in her throat at seeing the slack face of a ten year old who had died in the stiff arms of her Muggleborn mother. In her dream, Hermione kneels down and sits by the bodies, wondering if she was going into some sort of second-degree shock _(hush)_.

She wishes that she knew their names. The war was destroying more than lives, wiped out more than just towns and homes. It blasted people off the fabric of history, erased their existence entirely from memory. The loss of the wealth of a human mind was staggering, immeasurable; but the fear of dying and leaving no trace behind filled Hermione not with a sense of loss, but one of terror. She learnt quickly that when bodies began piling up, the time to remember each life was proportionally slashed.

She leaned over and brushed a curl off of the girl's face, and draped her cloak over the mother and daughter. With a little thought, they could be sleeping _(hush now)_. Hermione lingers for only a minute longer, before pushing away.

She stands slowly, only to look up to see someone staring back.

After the first few times, the sight of the shrouded figure draws from her only a brief jolt of surprise. He is not always there (Hermione was almost sure it was a man, or perhaps a tall, well built woman). She has yet to see more than just his outline, but she does not chase. In the dream construction of her memories, Hermione shies from the implications of someone she did not recognize appearing in them.

When she casts her gaze back to the girl and her mother, wanting their existence to be remembered by at least one person, Hermione turns cold. Slowly, her brain clicks over the changed scene that had rearranged itself behind her back.

The ground is the same, the blackened trees still stand, but there is no blood, and there are bodies. Bodies everywhere, some mutilated, some half buried by earth… but bodies nevertheless. _Flopping like string less puppets with the te__e__r dead in a ditch isn__'__t that just -_

Hermione knows that if she tries to walk, she will probably fall. If she falls, she will probably never get up again, and she doesn't know what that would mean for her consciousness since these were unlike any normal dreams she ever had before. She stands still instead, and does not know that the lack of physical stimulation is just the trigger that her mind needs to identify this new scene.

The site had been a hideout. It had been her shift, her responsibility to look out for any approaching danger. She remembers being tired and stressed, but worst of all she had been impatient. She wanted to return to her actual task of constructing new wards for the safe houses, not march up and down the perimeter like a dog. She remembered, in the pits of boredom, muttering a few spells that checked on the wards, forgetting that operational wards would pulse a bright light, a beacon in the night. The spell had been out before she realized her mistake, and after the great flash of light the ground gave a mighty heave. Someone had seen her stupid, stupid mistake, and had decided against taking on the wards. He would instead make the earth buckle beneath their feet and swallow them whole instead.

The sheer amount of magic required to move solid earth was so mind blowing that Hermione's caution had not overridden her scepticism. They kept tabs on every Death Eater who had a significant amount of magical power, and they had received no alerts that one may be nearby. She ran, but perhaps not as fast as she should have; she shouted, but maybe not as urgently as she could have; she began casting counter-spells, but perhaps not as quickly as she would have if she had realized how real the threat had been. People were moving, but even as they were bolting out the doors Hermione remembered watching colossal chunks of dirt rise from the ground, the resulting hole swallowing everything above it, before the hovering mass crashed clumsily back down to earth.

The attack had lasted only a few minutes. Limbs stuck out almost comically from the ground, tables and beds were half buried. Walls had collapsed, and the air was filled with moans and shrieks. There wasn't much blood, but so many people had just been completely _buried_ under the earth, choking to death on it. It had been one of the worst days of her life, and she did not need to relive it through a dream (_hush quick_).

That scene is where she now stands. Hermione looks around frantically for a way to walk out without stepping on anything – any_one_ – but her gaze lands instead on a figure standing a few dozen meters away from her, apparently uninjured, surveying the area as she had been. She squints, trying to place a name to the face, but a bend in the wards jolts her from her sleep. She looks around wildly; the sudden intrusion of magic makes Harry sit bolt upright from where he lies on the couch, makes Ron freeze in the middle of ducking behind the bench. When it is only Arthur who pops into view, sheepish expressions sprout onto their faces. Ron straightens with a little cough, and Hermione hastily tucks her wand back into her sleeve. Harry grins as he walks over to a confused Weasley Senior.

"You three really had me worried for a second," Weasley senior joked. "The looks on your faces…"

Hermione begins to blush, but she spies the way the older man's knuckles had gone white over his wand and turns to hide a grin instead.

"Hey Dad, thought you'd forgotten about us." Ron says.

"Oh, I did," Arthur banters, "But someone reminded us a few hours ago that we needed to come collect you, or you'd come hunting us." He pauses to squint at their faces, his gaze lingering on Hermione. "Are you sure you're all ready to go? I'm sure another day or so of rest wouldn't do you any harm."

"We were just wondering when we were allowed out of here," Hermione says firmly. "We're grateful for the chance to relax, Mr. Weasley, but we really feel like we need to be getting back."

Arthur watches all of them but when they all nod, he sighs. "Alright, if you feel that you're up to it. I've been trying to hold off the press, but I won't be able to do it anymore as soon as you step out of these wards."

"We can face a few cameras and quills," Ron jokes softly.

Hermione pulls a face, not feeling as confident as him. They take a few moments to gather their cloaks before Apparating with Arthur, straight into a hall.

The ceilings are high, the walls shiny and dark, looking like polished marble. The floor spreads itself at her feet, sprawling across an area so large, so unlike their cosy safehouse that it is disconcerting. For one second there is silence, and Hermione has a smallest of moments to expel a breath. Then it's as if someone flicked a switch; light and noise explode into her face all at once, surprising her enough that she flinches and her hand darts towards her wand. After the years of needing to be cautious above anything else (_constant vigilance!_), she finds that that need did not disappear, or even relent enough to let her rejoice as she sees others rejoicing around her.

"Mr. Potter! How did you finally defeat He Who Must Not Be Named?"

"Ms. Granger, any words to commemorate this amazing day?"

"Mr. Weasley! Where have you all been these past three days?"

"There are still reports of Voldemort sightings coming in, what do you have to say about that?"

"Is it really over? Is the war really over? How do you feel about that?"

The words feel surreal. Hermione scratches nervously at the skin at her fingers as they are pushed along. Ron and Harry turn, as though they sense her unease. They shift their bodies slightly and effectively block her from view. They begin catching the rest of the questions that come their way, saving their own questions she sees that they have for her for later. The next reporter that shoves his question into their faces almost has his camera hexed into his. He quickly withdraws as Aurors converge on them and begin to clear a path.

Voices clamour dimly in the back of her head, and Hermione can't even pin one to one of the hundred faces pressing down around them. The faces smile, laugh, grin, shout, _exult_; but for some reason it all bubbles down to a blurred murmur in her ears, a brook of voices that seem distinct on first impression but cannot be siphoned and sorted from one another upon closer inspection. Hermione shakes her head. _Pull together simple just breathe -_

"…mione," a quiet voice murmurs into her ear.

She turns her head, a miniscule movement, and brushes against the skin of Harry's jaw.

His eyes worry at her. "I think you should go back home after this, you look faint. There's only…" His voice fades away, dips back into the stream.

Hermione shakes her head as though trying to shake sleep from her eyes. "Okay Harry, just lead the way."

She doesn't notice how thin her voice sounds, misses the look the boys exchange over her head. There is a tightening of hands on her elbows, but she disregards that too, and the attempt that it was to ground her.

She is so tired.

.

Matthew Libon taught her a lot of things. She had a little experience with plotting and planning, not including their little stints in Hogwarts, but the intricateness of the professional work stunned her. He was twice her age, and had dedicated his life to his work. For the first week, Hermione sat on the sides, while Libon managed to simultaneously work and explain each step of his actions to her as he completed them. It did not take any spectacular feats for her to become privy to all his information. Rather, as soon as he was sure of her identity was (more precisely, once he knew she had an iron clad alibi against any suspicions he may have about her), and perhaps more importantly her intelligence, there was no question she could not ask, or any sheet of paper hidden from her eyes. Hermione found that not all the members on the team allowed her such freedom among their belongings, but Libon was surprisingly easy to get along with.

For the first week, to the amusement of a few of her friends, she spent very little time talking and most of it immersed in listening. She slept rarely, only a few hours at her time, and even then her mind buzzed with the information she had learnt the previous day. Libon had only one rule: Hermione could write nothing he told her down. Forfeiting notes for his wealth of knowledge was quite a price to pay, even though she was quite confident in her retention skills. She spent every crumb of attention in soaking it all up: intel, site maps, weather patterns, tracking devices and spells, stealth charms… she even began developing Libon's characteristic trait of researching even the most ambiguous details of a site, such as the local culture and history, and harvesting any news clippings concerning the business published within the last five decades.

It took Hermione a characteristically short time to become an intern of sorts to Libon. By then she was in so deep that aside from the Logistics crew, she saw very little of anyone else until it came to briefing the attack teams. The planning of raids was an activity undertaken by almost all field agents, but the bigger, more delicate jobs were handled almost exclusively by them. She did not know all of them by name, as very few took the time to talk to her, but she knew the name of three others that worked at Libon's level: William Tully, Eliza Furth, and Kyle Bettin. Instead of being assigned Heads of various tasks, they were all instead assigned entire plans, and each applied their own brand of planning to each mission. Their little department worked in an intricate way, and spiralled out like a spider web. Almost always these four were the only people in the entire Order who knew the whole plan that would be carried out, and the field agents would have their respective slices of information that was relative to their job. Libon still refused to let her take notes, the result of which had honed Hermione's memory skills to an almost disturbing degree of accuracy.

.

It is the second night they have spent away from the safehouse that Hermione finally comes face to face with the nameless figure of her dreams.

In the previous nights, Hermione dreams constantly. Despite the return to her routine, despite the work she slaves over in an effort to ensure that she is too tired to dream, she does not escape the reel of memories her subconscious plays back to her every night in the few hours it has; sometimes even minutes. She shies away from the Dreamless, because she knows that there is a very real risk that she would become addicted to the potion (the Muggle term for it would be _drug_).

There is no white lining along the edges of her vision, no haze or blur; nothing that physically marks her dreams separate from reality. She realizes that it is this missing distinction that traps her within these subconscious plays, that blurs the line between sleep and flashbacks. She would lean her head on her arms for just a moment, and wake up an hour later with paper clinging to the side of her face. When she asks, her colleagues tell her they disapprove of her exhausting hours, and flat out refuse her request to wake her when they next find her sleeping amongst her papers.

When she does not relent, it is Tully who finally takes her aside, and tells her to forget it.

"Short from physically dragging you and locking you in your room, or spiking your drink, we cannot make you rest," he says seriously. "So when your body is so tired you fall asleep in the middle of a blink, I think you should be taking that as a very big slap in the face. You need to rest more, Hermione."

_I don__'__t like what I see in my dreams_, she cries silently. _Don__'__t make me face them_.

On the third night back, Hermione opens her eyes to find herself in a field. The dry grass reaches her waist and rustles hoarsely as she passes by _(walk quiet gentle)_. She can't help but hold her breath, clench her fists, because every night she expects the dreams to take a turn for the worse, float a scene she fought to have buried to the top of her mind once more. Today, she is clean, she is alone, but she is holding two wands. One is hers, she doesn't recognize the other.

The solitude slowly adds to her fear. She looks around, and her eyes comb for familiar territory. Something niggles in the back of her mind, something missing. Her mind shuffles for things to place in the landscape: a tree gone, a charred body misplaced. This goes on, a dizzying, nauseating repetition, and it isn't until a figure appears at the edge of her vision that Hermione understands what is wrong. Her memory is lacking. Someone had been there that day. She hadn't been alone.

When she looks back, her path is marked by the bent stalks like a snake trail. The person stands where her path begun, as though he had Apparated to the exact spot she had started walking. This time the dream is day enough and he is close enough that she can not only see his face, but she is also able to recognize it. Hermione stumbles backwards, shocked and a little fearful.

"_Malfoy_?"

For a moment, he is perfectly still, so still that he gives Hermione the impression that she is speaking to herself. Surely it is him. He had changed, of course he had, but his face still remains recognizable, and of course there was the hair. Always the hair.

His _Stupefy_ shoots towards her so fast she hurts herself trying to fling her body out of the way. The searing red burns with it her fear, the crackle of burning shrub igniting outrage in its place. Hermione draws her wand and Malfoy spits hexes at her so fast three bounce off of her shields before she has turned enough to aim properly.

_What is his problem?_

The magic behaves enough like magic would in reality, did not distort as she thought it should in a dreamscape. Dreams.

Hermione had told herself during the war that she would – could – stop doing what every day expected of her to do after they had won (for it had always been _after_, and not _if_), and only then. The shattering moment of seeing Harry alone on the hill was exactly what Hermione had thought she needed as closure, as a sure sign that she could stop living a nightmare. The innocent, childish thoughts of _it will end happily ever after_ had, even if she loathed to admit it, helped her get by. However, it was evident now that her nightmare had merely moved from her waking moments to her sleeping ones.

She is abruptly seized by a blind rage. _I have played my part. Did I do something wrong? Why is this haunting me? Enough enough__ I've__ had enough enough just -_

It adds to the adrenalin, helps her move faster and sharpens her sight. Her duel with Malfoy quickly begins favouring her side, and he is backed up against a large bale of hay she might've sworn wasn't there a moment before. Burnt grass smokes around them.

The duel ends in a strange way: a stray spark buries itself into the skin of Malfoy's wrist, and he drops his wand with a yelp. Hermione lunges forwards and turns his head up as she presses her wand sharply into his throat.

A dozen questions run through her mind. _Are you real? What are you doing here? Can you actually hurt me?_

The questions peter down to a quiet hum of thought. _You can__'__t be my subconscious, the last time I thought about you was when Juliet__'__s son threw a tantrum and broke her Ming vase. Years ago. It__'__s not feasible that dreams from my immediate past have you in them. _

"What are you?" That sounds accurate, succinct.

"_Haaaa._"

The rasp scares her for a moment before Hermione realizes that she is pressing down too hard on his windpipe. She relieves the pressure, but only a little. She is daunted by his physical strength, but there is very little difference in their levels of magic. She knows that Malfoy is not stupid enough to risk her casting anything this close to his throat.

He coughs once, before staring at her cheek with a defiant expression. "I'm human."

Hermione leans on her arm again, and a gurgle rises from him. "Try again."

Malfoy struggles against her, and snarls when three sparks shoot into his face. "You're a fucking psycho Granger, do you know that?"

"_Try. Again._" _(hush)_

"_What do you want me to say?_" She feels his magic pulsing against hers, struggling, but for the moment, trapped. "My name's Draco Malfoy, I'm twenty three. I attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry before the Dark Lord descended once more over Britain and everything went to hell. Life has become slightly more interesting for me than others, though despite my doubts, I've clearly clung on to sanity better than most."

She measures the time by heartbeats. After five, she is almost sure that he will not attack her again, without reason. After ten, she allows herself to tear her eyes away and glance at his fallen wand. It was not twitching towards him, he did not show any indication that he was about to summon it and return to their duel. However, it was only after twenty (she lost count) that she relaxed, leaning away but also taking his wand with her. She drew a shaky breath, before glaring at him.

"What are you doing here?" (_Don__'__t belong here you)_

"I should be the one asking _you_ that," he snaps back, his calm quickly dropping away.

Hermione curls her tongue back over the curse that leapt up her throat. "_Do not_ mess with me," she snarls, "or I will destroy you. Merlin knows that I've done worse."

He raises an eyebrow at that, but does not disregard her threat. When he next speaks his voice is cautious, with a fine tremble that she is surprised that she can hear. She does not know him well enough to label it correctly as either fear or anger. "What exactly to you want me to say? I'm as surprised as you are that you're here."

There is truth in his words, but there is also something about his phrasing that makes her pause. Reason crawls its slow way back to her; it takes Hermione longer than she would have been proud of to riddle it out. A simple question, that does not give too much away, will confirm it all.

"What do you mean?"

He seems to be trying to assess her. His gaze piercing, but shuttered enough that she can't read him. He doesn't answer her.

She tries again. "Are you conscious?"

After the longest while Malfoy tilts his head to the side; a simple confirmation. She lets go of him and steps away so quickly that he seems surprised. He raises a hand – slim, but rough – to touch the hollow of his throat. Hermione ignores him. Her head is spinning. _This isn__'__t right isn__'__t right -_

She paces, one hand knotting itself into her hair as the other grips her wand tighter. Her head swirls as her steps quicken, and Hermione decides that this isn't the plane of existence that she wants to begin thinking about this. One last glance tells her that Malfoy is silently questioning her sanity (_aren__'__t we all hah I am hah_) as she strides quickly away from him and towards nothing else. However, as she walks farther, Hermione feels herself being pulled from the dreamscape, like taffy.

She wakes with a loud breath to the four walls of her bedroom. Hermione utters a wandless spell, and her wards glow a sunny yellow. Only then does she allow herself to draw the covers over her head, leaving a small space for air, preparing herself to think.

Within the past three years, Draco Malfoy had become one of the hardest Death Eaters they had ever had to track. His obscurity prickled the attention of a number of people, and even Hermione had been assigned at one point to try and pin him down. After Voldemort's initial upsurge, Malfoy Manor had been one of the many pureblood estates that had become quickly inaccessible to the Light, but the massive plot of land that it sat on marked it out from the rest. The Malfoys themselves quickly disappeared from the public eye as well, though Lucius, and even Narcissa, appeared quite commonly to those eyes that picked him out from behind his Death Eater masks.

There had never been any primary evidence as to what Draco had become after following in his father's footsteps. Speculation, rumours, rumoured sightings, sometimes even actual sightings, but none informative enough to confirm anything else other than the blindingly obvious: he had become a Death Eater. He was very, very rarely seen at raids, and his magical signature appeared even less frequently than Voldemort's at the utterly destroyed locations they had arrived too late to stop. There had just simply been no way to track him.

Hermione thought that secrecy surrounding Malfoy placed him on a pedestal higher than any Death Eater deserved, even became a topic for small talk. His name became discussed in the same breath as the Lestranges, the ones who had set fire to Diagon Alley, and Dolohov, who had managed to plant a spell in Gringotts that rotted the brains of almost half the goblins on duty that day. Of the rumours that managed to not only last past a week but also constantly mutate to stay interesting, Malfoy And What He Had Been Up To had always been on the list.

So what did that leave her? Besides with a man that had evaded their best wizards for half a decade, a man she had not seen since he was seventeen, a man so (_apparently_) _dangerous_ that she had seen a look of relief on Aurors' faces when they came back from a search for him empty handed. This is the man she is sharing her subconscious with, a time when she is at her most vulnerable and completely defenceless.

Hermione takes a deep breath, and finds that she lacks the strength to pull herself out of bed.


	3. Part 3

**AN:** I don't know why this is taking me so long to upload, haha. Thank you everyone for reading! ~

* * *

><p><em><strong>Part 3.<strong>_

As she walks along her strip of land, Hermione realizes that she is in danger. There is a fine tremble she feels through her feet that has travelled to almost the top of her head. She is trying to run (_but what from what?_) when a particularly violent shake jerks her out of the dream. She peers groggily up into Eliza's annoyed face.

"_Hermione_."

She tries to curl up at that tone; Hermione realizes again that she has fallen asleep amongst her notes and large sprawling maps. Every movement brings to her ears a rustle of paper loud enough it takes the sleep with it.

Eliza shakes her again. "Hermione, go home. Now."

She grimaces. She could probably count on one hand how many times Eliza has spoken directly to her. One of them had been the time when Argus Tuft, one of the Aurors leading a hunt for a pack of Dementors, had sent a distress call that cut off before they could finish transcribing it. It could only mean two things: Argus had forgotten what he was going to say, or that he had been killed. Hermione thinks that her sleeping habits are a comparatively smaller concern.

She opens her mouth to assure her that she is fine, only to have no sound come out. Her mind begins slipping into a blank panic, but then sees the tip of Eliza's wand poking out from beneath her robes. She tries to giving the woman a reproachful look, but finds herself instead being dragged to her feet and pushed out the door.

Only when Hermione finds that she has very little physical strength to halt the other woman's steps does she finally realize how poorly she had been looking after herself.

Eliza drags her on a long journey. The maze of corridors that lead from the department to the outside has been a reason that Hermione had not stumbled upon the Logistics group sooner. They were as paranoid as those who had been Unspeakables, the corridors were proof. Direction was one thing, but some doors only opened if you took three steps towards it from an angle, and some hallways only appeared in your vision if you turned on the spot. It was extravagant, but very effective. No one bothered to disrupt them in person, most used charms to communicate instead.

Just as she begins to protest for the fifth time, Eliza spins her to a stop. Hermione blinks owlishly at Ron and Harry, standing almost miraculously before her. Their identical shocked expressions make her frown.

"Not good to see me?" she tries to joke.

They both ignore her. Ron rushes forwards instead, taking her from Eliza's grip while Harry's look of shock slowly rearranges itself into one of anger. Hermione feels herself retreating at that look, mellowing. She had hardly seen either of them after they had left the quiet of the safehouse. Newspaper clippings that waved at her did not count.

"Hermione," Harry begins.

"I know," she grumbles before he tears into her. "Take me home."

Eliza nods at a look Ron had shot her, before stepping back to allow the two to take her elbows and Apparate her to her living room. Home nowadays was a tiny little apartment that had been left to her by a distant aunt, with a grand total of three rooms, including the combined bathroom-laundry room. It was sufficient for one person, but not really made for anything more. Hermione shakes their hands off and tries to stalk to her bedroom, but does not quite manage the attitude when she stumbles.

"Hermione…"

She scowls at the wall. Ignoring Ron's outstretched arms, using her own for support instead, Hermione feels her way to the door. Sometime during the Apparition her eyelids had begun to droop; now, with her bedroom ten feet away, it was a struggle to see through them. There is a quiet shuffle as Ron comes to her side again, and this time wordlessly helps her to bed. He takes her shoes off, and her outer cloak, before letting her slide between the covers.

"B'Ron," she mumbles.

"Bye, Hermione," he replies softly. "Sleep well, will ya?"

Ron leaves the room when he receives no reply. Harry looks up when he returns, a question in his eyes. His wand is out, and with a wave he Vanishes the last of the old fruit mummifying in the decorative bowl.

Ron shakes his head when he sees him. "She went straight to sleep. I think she was unconscious before her head hit the pillow."

Harry frowns. "Well… there's not much we can do right now. Maybe check in on her in a few hours, and ask again if she'd let a Healer take a look at her."

"She didn't even read those memos I sent her about it," Ron reminds him. "I'm pretty sure she won't be happy talking about it face to face."

"This isn't up to her anymore," Harry replies, grim. "She can't use work as an excuse either."

Ron nods absentmindedly. "You know Tully? Will Tully? He's one of the other Heads of that place. Even he remembers Hermione. She's the girl with panda eyes. You know something major has happened if even Tully notices."

"The entire Logistics Department here has a very strange feeling about them," Harry muses. "All of them have fairly infamous quirks. I remember I didn't understand what your dad said at first, when he heard that Hermione was going to become part of that team."

_And it had been extremely lucky that they had both been in the building the time Eliza had called for them_, Harry thought to himself. Then he stops with his hand on the door handle. _Though when you take into account what the woman was capable of, it was probably the result of her exquisite planning, instead of luck_. Though he rarely frequented the Logistics halls (in truth, he was a little scared of the place), even Harry had heard of the strange things the Department heads were capable of.

"This isn't normal," Ron mutters. His eyes lock on Hermione's bedroom door, and Harry turns to follow his gaze. "We both felt better after staying at the safehouse, is she reacting so badly? If anything I would say she's getting worse. Did you hear what Tully had to say about her? I thought he had been exaggerating. Without his warning I would've hexed that _thing_ Eliza was carrying. The only thing that I think hadn't changed was her hair."

Harry shakes his head tiredly. "Maybe it's about time we asked her about her dreams." It couldn't be a spell, she couldn't be sick. It couldn't be. She's in _Logistics_, for Merlin's sake. Maybe they aren't the best healers or duellers there, but they _know_ how to be. They know _everything_. Diagnostics is not the problem."

"Well, clearly not talking about her problems aren't doing her much good. We'll give her a few days to get her strength back, then we'll talk about it to her when she next comes in."

.

_The smell; it sticks to you so bad. _

_Her arm rises and slides a slow finger under her nose. It__'__s just a light tang, a passing odor, yet still acrid enough to make her lip curl back. The grimace is a familiar expression to her face, but its suppression came equally naturally. _

_She flips her palm over. For one moment, the back of her hand appears dark, soaking. She sees it so clearly that her eyes see the afterimage left behind. A torn, wrecked, bloody appendage superimposed on top of a healthy one. She closes her eyes and tells herself it isn__'__t real. _

_It isn__'__t real. _

_Breathe, clear. _

.

She tries to remember when the dreams started. They were normal, she had reasoned. Guilt, if ignored consciously, had the most annoying way of resurfacing subconsciously. In fact, she remembers thinking that it was so normal that she did not even notice when she became trapped in the days and nights of horror. She worked in it, but soon she dreamt in it too.

It hadn't been when Libon began giving her a firmer position in the department. Inside a month, Hermione had begun working closely with Matthew (it was also around this time that she had begun calling him Matt), and he had begun handing a few of the projects over to her command completely. The cocktail of adrenalin and excitement with a dash of fear went straight to her head every time she was handed a folder containing rough details of the next raid, the effects of which kept her floating on cloud nine until she followed a backup team to the site she had set the plan for.

She had been holed up in the Logistics offices for so long that the reality of war had faded from her mind. When people came back bleeding and tired, they were still alive, still trying to smile, telling tales of heroism or tragic lasts. Her subconscious quietly spun these events into almost fairy-like tales that made them easier to digest.

When she first stepped through the little shop, nestled between trees and mountains, she didn't understand what she was seeing. For a hysterical moment, something in the back of her mind giggled _Black magic black shop black, charrrrred people! _

The magic residue made her pulse jump, and the smell rotted her stomach. There had been broken bits of furniture and other items on the floor, and some lumps that looked a little too like body parts. She remembered taking only one step into that shop, a step straight into something soft and squished under her feet, oozing around her feet. She hadn't had enough time to turn around, so she had just thrown up on her shoes instead.

.

"Malfoy, kindly leave. Silently would be nice, but it really is just the removal of your presence that is crucial."

He sneers at her. "Wow, Granger, I had a bet going with a Davies that being Potter's bitch would make you into a uppity little puke. Looks like I should collect."

"Would this be before or after Davies is gets the Kiss or his eyes cut out by one of your pals? Because I hear Voldemort is currently no longer in business."

To her surprise, Malfoy blanches. It's a reaction she did not expect from him, and her mean determination wavers. She looks dispassionately at the wall, but strains for the sound of any movement that would tell her Malfoy is moving from his spot.

Hermione sighs. She had been walking along what she recognized as the Muggle neighbourhood around the Burrow, revelling in the quiet and total lack of people when Malfoy came strolling around the corner. Her heart leapt into her throat when she saw him, but there was no way she would let that fear show. _Don't give the Big Bad Death Eater more of you to manipulate_.

The strange thing is that the Malfoy in her dreams had yet to threaten her, curse her, or really, harm her in any way. There had been the initial duel, but after that it had just been the endless stream of insults. Hermione fancied thinking that this couldn't be the real Malfoy. He was too… _nice_.

"I thought that you were just too poor to afford a wig, but now I see that you actually like keeping that animal on your head. Can I pat it, or will it swallow me whole?"

Nice is the wrong word. She didn't respond to his jibes, keeping her eyes on the wall.

Evil, that was the word. She had been expecting such an elite Death Eater to be more _evil_. It gave way to the thinking that perhaps this Malfoy really was just a figure of her dreams. Why she was dreaming of the ferrety git was beyond her, but at least… at least it was better than the alternative. Despite all that she and Ron and Harry had said about Malfoy being a coward, a no talent hack, he had managed to not only survive but also rise through Voldemort's ranks. You needed more than just courage and talent to do that. _You needed to be insane babbler babbling like a little-_

"Look around, Granger."

Hermione jumps. His voice suddenly is very close.

Malfoy snickers. "Turn that bushy head of yours this way. I hear that this was your doing."

She flinches and pulls her knees up to her chin, dread curling around her at the sudden turn of topic.

"Malfoy, leave."

"Touchy, are we?" She fights an urge to stare at him, the change that took a split second to take over. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him look around. "I'm rather proud. The little Mudblood sending others to do her job. Honestly Granger, since when did you become so comfortable with sacrifice?"

"_SHUT UP!_"

His cackles echo skywards. Hermione blinks the sudden hot prickle of tears out of her eyes and shakes her head. She bites her lip to stop the panic flowing out. She had sworn to not show Malfoy her fear, but in that same breath she had sworn to not let him see how destroyed she really was.

He had been surprisingly accurate in his attack; the whole sacrificing others for the greater good was not something she could be strong enough to do. Hidden behind her stacks of paper and diagrams Hermione knew she had purposely never stopped to think of the real lives that she was playing with when she designed teams, the homes that she mapped out to destroy. They were instead black dots on her parchment, colored tags moving through a map. She knew that her conscience had become a thin, starved voice in the back of her head, buried under layers of false security, but there was no chance in hell that she was going to go diving through those layers now. Not while a Malfoy was stalking around her head.

Hermione draws a breath. "And you, Malfoy? I guess sacrificing others for your cause is a part of the family motto. What did your fathers sacrifice to be able to keep you slimy Slytherins in Hogwarts when Harlow and Rudard were dragged to join theirs? What did your mother sacrifice to be able to forfeit the Dark Mark? We found her body, you know," she said cruelly, "We found her half buried in the dirt. You couldn't have had anything to do with that, could you?" _(So low you sunk so)_

Malfoy's reaction is curious; he wears an expression that could be either furious or meditative. Hermione feels a cold seep through her as his eyes meet hers. She waits for him to say anything, hardly daring to breath. When he does finally open his mouth, she flinches, gripping her wand tightly. She is in half a mind to let him hex her. She is appalled at herself.

"Did you give her a proper burial?"

She blinks. "What?"

He stares at her with an expression she can't name. There is a bitter edge to the supposed fury. Hermione knows that some of it is towards her, but his reply makes her think that not all of it is.

"Did you give her a proper burial?" he repeats, even more coldly.

She turns back to the wall, trying to control her heartbeat. She had not been there on site, she had not asked details from those who returned; she did not have an answer for him. There is no good answer for him.

"I don't know."

There is a soft exhale behind her. Hermione closes her eyes, and wishes to be pulled from the dream. The confusion boiling inside her is giving her the biggest headache.

…_nished?_

.

She wakes up the next morning, blinking sun out of her eyes. Hermione reaches for her wand and the glow of the wards are almost blotted out by the natural light streaming through the curtains. She glances at the clock, and is unsurprised, but when she glances at her calendar, a small yelp escapes her at the magically crossed dates.

She had been asleep for over fifty hours.

_Fifty hours_.

She doesn't take the time to shower, but uses a cleaning charm instead. There's time to run a brush through her teeth and magically snap her hair up into a bun before spelling some clothes on and Apparating straight to her workroom. There's a familiar press of wards as they reads her magical signature, before with a small _pop_ it lets her through.

Hermione stumbles a little as her eyes adjust to the darkness, and takes just long enough to assure herself that her space had been relatively untouched, before she turns and races into the halls. She finds herself lost twice before she runs into Kyle. The man's ginger tips seem to quiver in surprise even as he manages to catch her with one arm and his glasses with the other.

"Hermione! What are you doing here?" he admonishes. Kyle is at least ten years older than her, but he does not look it.

"Why shouldn't I be here?" she asks, irrationally defensive.

"Eliza told all of us that you were taking a few days break and wouldn't be back for a while," he shrugs. "I just thought that if you were back there would've been some kind of notice."

She nods. It is logical. All four of them were especially strict regarding information flow. Hermione had very rarely found herself needing to repeat herself between the four, despite having only previously briefed one or the other on a situation. She had yet to be included in this loop, but she hadn't felt excluded. It was a privilege, and her few months at the department was nothing compared to the decades in which the other four had worked together.

She is about to continue on her way, look for that elusive Eliza, or even Harry or Ron (though her hopes are slim) when she realizes that Kyle had yet to drop his grip on her arm. She looks pointedly down at his hand.

"Kyle?" He doesn't look at her. Hermione frowns. "What are you doing? Let go of me. I need to find Eliza."

"Hermione, Eliza said you shouldn't be here," he says softly.

She gives a short, sharp laugh, but her eyes widen when she sees that Kyle is not joking. "What are you talking about?"

"They say you're sick," he says cautiously. She can see that no one had expected her back, and so Kyle hadn't been told how much he should be revealing to her. "They say… they said you were going to away to get better."

Hermione finds a contempt rising within her that she never knew she held for Kyle. He had been charming in a very guy-next-door way, and always polite. Now, she saw him with damning eyes. _Always do as you__'__re told, obedient dog, stand on your own two legs you__'__d fall over you you you little SON OF A_

"Hermione?"

His voice jerks her back. "Um, okay." Hermione squeezes her eyes shut for one second before looking up again. She can tell by Kyle's expression that she is acting a little crazier than he thought she'd be.

"Can you take me to Eliza?" she asks (_hah_).

She watches impatiently as he considers it, but she was certain of his answer. Kyle liked his own company; he would prefer handing her off to someone else than baby-sit her until she felt like leaving again. As she follows him down another corridor, it strikes her that she is being treated as an invalid.

They come upon Eliza just as she steps outside from behind an unmarked door. Hermione does not take this as a sign of good luck, good timing. Instead, a familiar cold spreads through her. Whatever conversation that is about to come Eliza is expecting to be short, and that didn't fit any of the topics that are swimming around in her head. Hermione straightens a little; she refuses to be cowed by the older woman.

"Hermione," Eliza greets her cordially enough. "You don't look better."

Straight to the point then. She grits her teeth. "Eliza, I've been asleep for nearly three days straight. I think if I still don't look better, maybe you should let me borrow some of your makeup."

Eliza purses her lips; Hermione feels contrite for her tone, but she can tell that any weakness would give the woman an excuse to cart her off to bed again. There was no need. _I__'__m perfectly alright_. _Puhfuclee (haa)_.

"You look starved. See a Healer."

Frankly, Hermione didn't understand or care why Eliza felt such a need to strip down her word usage to the barest minimum. That is to say, she didn't care before. Now, it angers her in a new way.

"No, Eliza, I really don't think I need to. I need to get back to work. Can you update me? I haven't been sent the floor plans of Banett's basements." Banett is a pureblood line that is surviving by the string of the single hair on the head of the last heir. At last count the man had just passed two hundred years of age.

Eliza shook her head. "Will's taking care of it. You need a clean bill of health from a Mediwitch before you start work again."

During the conversation, Kyle flits nervously between them. The man looks as though he needed to verbalize a farewell, but the two women were borderline bickering and he did not want to come in at the wrong time and have the waves of brewing hostility aim themselves towards him. Hermione shoots him an irritable glance, but turns the brunt of it quickly back to Eliza.

"So if I subject myself to a medical examination, you will _allow_ me to start work again?" Hermione snaps.

A vague look of surprise emerges on Eliza's face. "It is not my condition. It is Harry Potter's. Ron Weasley was also in agreement."

.

"Fine," she says angrily.

Nothing responds.

Hermione looks around her living room. It is her space, her small space; her small space that is hers.

"_Fine_," she repeats, this time scathing.

Talking to Harry and Ron hadn't achieved anything. She had waited for their return from god knows where (conference in France, possibly about the French wizards who had been found trading with Voldemort) before trying to appeal to her friendship with them, for the first time in her life trying to tug on her people-in-a-high-place string that would get questions about her health wiped clean.

It had backfired instead. The Healer she had conceded to examining her had said that there was nothing physically wrong about her, but there was an anomaly in her aura that they wanted to study. The Healer followed up to say that they did not think it was life threatening at the moment, but there was a possibility that it could mutate. Hermione had turned pale as soon as she heard, not out of worry for herself but because she knew that after hearing that, there was no way in any of the seven hells that Harry or Ron would let her go back to work.

After that, Harry and Ron stopped insisting that she go back to her apartment. They grabbed her instead, and basically _tossed_ her back. It was insulting, it was condescending; it was just _wrong_ of them to treat her like that but the matter was that due to her fussing almost everyone knew that Hermione Granger was now no longer allowed to work unless given the explicit permission from Harry, Ron, or a certified Healer.

"What do you expect me to do?" she had sulked. "Go home, sleep, think, maybe sleep some more? Sleep isn't the answer to everything. There is still so much to do." She was needed, damnit. She had work to do here.

"I know."

"No, but sleeping at St. Mungo's might," Harry said slyly.

Ron sees the look on her face, and steps in quickly. "Hermione, why don't you take some time out to spend with your parents?"

The suggestion is simple, but the brilliancy of it stuns them all into silence. At least the boys thought so; Hermione watches the hope in their eyes and turns away. It is in that moment that she finally decides to stop struggling against it. They are just worried for her… so worried. She is also intelligent enough to know by then that any more breath she spent on this argument would be wasted breath.

Her eyes graze over the light patterning of her walls. The unrest already flutters in her stomach, and she becomes anxious. Hermione doesn't quite understand the feeling; she had never had a problem with being alone before.

What Ron and Harry doesn't know is that she already knows where her parents are, and she knew that if she were to appear before them now, she wouldn't be able to leave for months, which is the time it would take for her to gently nurse their memories back to the surface. It was time she couldn't afford to spend with them, not right now. The _Obliviate_ they were under was too strong a spell that she'd risk trying to force it off. It made her ache, but Hermione couldn't leave now.

Which brought her back to why she was so angry. She had forfeited a reunion with her parents for her job, her work. It was rich of them to be turning her away.

No, it is wrong to accuse Harry and Ron like that. She wouldn't.

She'd take a few more days off, just like they want, and get better enough to get a clean bill of health from that silly Healer. She'd move into a new place, a temporary place, possibly a motel, just in case they thought to check up on her and reprimand what they saw. It wouldn't take much. Eat a bit more, sleep a bit more. Get back into a normal, healthier routine. It wouldn't take too long. It shouldn't take too long.

It doesn't take too much effort to find a new place. She is not short for money, what with her own savings as well as the old fund her parents had provided her with.

There is a pang when she thinks about them, so very close, but she steels herself against it. She had priorities. Ending Voldemort is not the end of the war. A smart Death Eater could come along and tear into the scraps of what was left of them and really win the whole thing. They were all stupid to be letting her go now. Now is still a crucial time, _now is -_

It takes her a single phone call to find a motel suitable. She brings hardly anything; changes of clothes, soap, toiletries and a few books but not much else. The central room is small but it doesn't include the bathroom or small kitchen. Hermione takes her wand and casts her wards, and adds a few more to the usual mix _(undetectable far away, I'm in Australia remember?)_ before putting her wand aside. She vows to not touch it for at least three days.

She spends her first day in the new place cleaning, tidying. She checks the content of the fridge to find a single lettuce and a few lonely potatoes. In the freezer is a single slab of meat she doesn't think is safe for eating. Hermione throws out the meat, and closes the fridge. She considers going shopping, but instead orders food. Her cooking skills are limited at best; on bad days the oiliest, most greasy take out was still the better alternative.

She does everything manually: cleans the bathroom, vacuums, wipes down the kitchen. By the end of her cleaning spree she feels grimy and sticky, so she takes a hot shower. She lets the water pound her skin until she begins to chill. She steps out and wraps her hair up, then brushes her teeth. Hermione has to sort through a few things before she finds some clean pyjamas, but dons them and turns her attention to her hair. She refuses to use a hair dryer; even before magic came into her life, she had learned that hers was not the type of hair to be used with a hair dryer. Heating and drying charms had been the next best thing, but today she had time to do otherwise. Using another towel, she rubs at her head until her arms are sore and her scalp feels like it is flaking.

Finally, she runs out of chores. Hermione turns to her bed, eyeing it as though it might swallow her in her sleep. She snorts indelicately at her own ridiculousness before climbing in. She touches her wand one last time to ensure that her wards glow yellow, and finally settles down.

_I__'__ll just have to do this myself. No one can help me, because I don__'__t need any help. _

She doesn't remember falling unconscious, but when Hermione next opens her eyes, it is to a broken street. Lamps skew at odd angles, pavement is ripped up. Dirty water pools at uneven sections of ground, and broken glass smiles at her like crooked teeth in shop windows. She touches her hand to a shard, and pulls away with blood sticking to her fingertips. Sirens wail in the distance, and rubbish huddles in the street corners.

There is the sound of feet crunching glass, and she looks up. Pale light glints off of Malfoy's blond hair, and he grins sardonically at her.

"Welcome back."


End file.
